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This is actually a grasshopper. But let's face it, they're basically the same thing. Right? Right. Photo by ABremner/"scoobygirl" - Click the image to view their photostream.

This week, I celebrated Lollipop Tuesday by eating a cricket. Sour cream and onion, to be exact. Grossed out? So am I. Don’t want to read on? I don’t blame you. Don’t know what Lollipop Tuesday is? Check out the top of the page to calm that burning sensation in your cerebrum.

As it turns out, I need quite a bit of convincing to chomp down on the thoracic exterior of a once-live, now-sour-cream-‘n’-onion cricket. It took me nearly half an hour to throw it down the hatch. Here are some of the reasonings my mind attempted during the excruciating limbo:

“I’m sure lots of people in other cultures eat bugs. Yeah. I’m sure I’ve seen it on a travel channel or something. Lots of other countries have people who see this just like I see a banana. A banana with legs and eyes and antenna. …No. no that’s not working.

Maybe there’s something on the box that will help me. Like a breakdown of how darn healthy this is for me. *gets box* Actually, it appears there’s only a diagram of the cricket. Outlining all its bits and pieces.

Okay, look. This is easy. It’s 9:00pm, and I don’t have anything new for Lollipop Tuesday. Nothing. And it’s too late to go out and try to do something tonight so it’s cricket or bust. Cricket or bust. Cricket or bust. Just do it. Do it and blog it. Bam. Wham Bam Bam-o.

No, I can’t. EEEEeeeewww look at it. Look at iiiiiit. Its little leg is poking out from the rest of it. EW.

All right, JESUS! I SHOULD EAT THEM BECAUSE OF JESUS. SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST IS SAID TO HAVE LIVED ON LOCUSTS AND HONEY IN THE DESERT. I CAN BE LIKE JOHN.

FOR JESUS!!

No, I’m sorry, this is disgusting. I can’t do this. I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t.

Okay here we go. I’ll turn it into a drink. A Cricket Soco Shot. Yeaaaah *goes and pours shot* Okay – new shot! Crunch up the cricket as fast as you can, and shoot the Soco.

…

…

Ew. I can’t do this. I can’t believe I’m actually going to do this. This is disgusting. All for a stinking blog. A BLOG. NO ONE’S EVEN GOING TO CARE.

All right, forget it. Just forget it. I’m just going to set an egg timer and when it goes off, I eat it. Like Scattegories. Okay. *Tick tick tick …..*

…

….

Okay this is unbearable. 5-4-3-2-1!”

And that’s when I did it. I popped the cricket in my mouth, where I quickly crunched down on it and kicked it to the back right corner of my mouth. My tongue in a frenzy to work to somehow chew it without tasting it, I was frozen in terror and got it lodged between my lip and teeth. Mortified, my tongue scraped at my teeth, trying to work it to the back of my throat where my esophagus could take over and I could be released from my peril.

Finally, it dislodged and I washed it back with a shot of Southern Comfort and disgust. I quickly reached for my enormous glass of orange juice, which I stashed for such a crisis. I guzzled the entire cup down in a blink and ran to the bathroom to rinse what I was sure were little cricket bits out from my mouth.

Haggard, I walked into the living room, where Dave made a remark about the irony of my egg timer being a ladybug. And then something or other about the cricket being in my throat and wanting to crawl back up.

Today, I’m walking around with a lump in my throat, mulling over the atrocity that I swallowed the evening prior. I imagine it swimming in my bowels, I imagine it running through the course of my digestive system, all the while a beady, black-eyed, cricket.

Which, by the way, doesn’t taste as much like sour cream and onion as it does regret. ♠

Hey, isn’t this the summer of the 13-year locust? Think of the culinary possibilities soon to be just outside your window screens…beating on the screens…buzzing and chirping…thousands of them, relentlessly beating and chirping and remembering their dear cousin, Jiminy Cricket, who ended up in a vat of sour-cream-and-onion batter…

Ew. I’ve hated crickets since one hid in my sister’s shoe and jumped out onto her when we were in the car and she was putting the shoe on. They eat paper, did you know that? Anyway, ew. I scrunched up my face and slammed my eyes shut and waved my hands in the air at the part about it getting caught between your lip and your teeth.

In some Japan’s inland regions, you will find teriyaki flavoured boiled grasshoppers. This food is served usually with steamed rice for traditional casual meals. But it is also good with rice wine;Sake.

An interesting fact: A cricket has all the nutritional value as a bite of cooked steak. Not a bad experience, considering your hesitation will be much shorter in the future…just in case of the ever looming end of the world scenario. In which case you might (probably) will be forced to eat at such extremes.

I tried a cricket before but it was covered with batter and was deep-fried; so it was crunchy! but the thought of eating an insect and chewing it’s head and fried brains and… ugh – it was sickening. but hey, congratulations (for the insect and making it on freshly pressed) loved reading your blog. keep it up!

While I couldn’t say for sure unless I was in that circumstance, I still don’t think I could bring myself to eat bugs if there was absolutely nothing else. Visions of the movie ‘Papillion’ with Steve McQueen come to mind. Blech.

I don’t care how tasty some people say bugs are… I see no reason to eat them on purpose. And having accidentally swallowed at least one or two flies or gnats in my time, no thanks. Nasty, nasty.

On the humorous side, there is a child’s book I read long ago called ‘How To Eat Fried Worms”. Cute book. It didn’t encourage me then to eat worms and I’m not about to start now.

If you mean the pic of the grasshopper, it’s just a matter of clicking on the image when you’re in edit mode, clicking on the little box with the picture settings, and then putting in the box labeled “Caption”. Hope this helps!

Wow, I have a huge amount of respect for you after reading this post. I’d only eat an insect if I were on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. But I’m not a celebrity so I don’t have to worry about that anytime soon.

haha thanks – I kept trying to imagine how much I would SUCK at that old game show – Fear Factor. I would be out in the first round, man. I don’t want them near me, let alone in my mouth. Super, super gross.

If you eat shrimp, crickets are a welcome improvement. A shrimp is pretty much just a cockroach in scuba gear. They eat decomposing corpses. And how is eating fruit better? You know fruit is still alive when you eat it? Oh, and BTW, its a sex organ. Eating an apple is the same as eating raw testicals. Ever have a Meat Lover’s pizza? Ask for the ingredients to the so called “meat” at some point. Your eyes are forward, you have canine teeth. You eat are made to eat dead animals. What’s the big deal?

I love the cockroach in scuba gear comment. And yeah, I’m sure when I think about it a lot of things I already eat are pretty nasty. But I have a particular problem with food that looks like itself. I’m sure if you ground these babies up and put them with hamburger meat, I wouldn’t blink twice. But a plain old cricket is pretty tough for me to swallow.